Month: May 2015

I find myself quoting my mother a lot lately. Like when someone had a run in her hose, mother always said, “Just keep them looking at your face.” Or she would say, “No one will ever notice on a galloping horse.”

Mother loved to quote the Bible, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye alo to them likewise” Luke 6:31. Or “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin” James 4:17.

There is no arguing with a mother who quotes the Word of God to you.

How often do we quote the most important person in the world? What God has to say about any given situation is more important than what anyone else says. When you stand face to face with a problem, it really doesn’t matter what you think or what anyone else thinks. What matters is what God has to say about it.

The words written in ink on a page of a book have no power. Having a Bible on your coffee table is good, but the greatest Book ever written is just paper and ink until the words are spoken. The Word of God does you no good if you don’t properly use it. How did God Himself use it? He spoke it. So how do you properly use it? You have to speak it.

For instance, when facing a pile of bills that must be paid right now, speak God’s Word that says, “My God shall supply all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” Phil 4:19.

Just believing in your heart that God will supply all your need is sweet, it is good, but it is not enough. You access the power of God’s Word by speaking it.

With all the rain that we’ve had lately, it brings memories of the Bull Creek floods of 1959, 1960, and 1999 in Vinita, Oklahoma. We lived through them all.

In about 1947, Mother and Dad bought a piece of property on North Second Street that was backed up by Bull Creek. Granddad and Dad built a 2-room block house on the new property. My mother who is 97 this year still lives in this home, which was added onto in the late 1950s and again in 1980s.

In the early spring of 1959, the creek started rising while we were in school. My sister talks about walking home from Riverside Elementary School, wading water, holding onto the bridge rail hand-over-hand on the sidewalk over the creek until she reached the end of the bridge.

I remember carrying a little girl we babysat for out of the house in water up to my chest and walking with her in my arms up to the north end of the block where the ground was higher. Quite an experience for a 10-year-old girl.

We were flooded again in 1960 and I remember putting my feet on the floor into water up to my ankles.

Our last flood was in May of 1999, the day after the tornado of Moore, Ok., which so many people remember. When Mother was interviewed after the flood, she said, “I’m fine. I just feel bad for those people in the tornado. They lost everything. I still have my stuff, it’s just wet.”

Each time we were flooded, the creek got up 3 feet high in the house. God has taken us through all the floods. He’s never failed us yet.

Isaiah 43:1-2 NIV says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”